Meet Navya Tuteja: Her school blocked ChatGPT, but this 17-year-old built an AI startup to help neurodivergent people find the right jobs

Navya Tuteja, a 17-year-old high school senior in the US, has launched an AI startup that already has more than 1,000 users and 20,000 job listings, despite her school blocking access to ChatGPT, Claude and similar AI tools, The Fortune reported on Sunday.

Tuteja, a senior at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology outside Washington, D.C., launched Raaha two months ago.

The free platform helps neurodivergent job seekers assess whether a job listing is a good fit before applying.

The idea came from her mother, who has partial hearing loss, and from Tuteja noticing that job posts often list what employers want but do not explain what the actual work is like.

Raaha scores job listings on several factors to give candidates a more realistic idea of the role before they spend hours applying.

Tuteja bootstrapped the platform herself and plans to keep it free while building traction. Her eventual business model could involve employers and workforce organisations paying to use the platform or improve their job listings.

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How the school’s AI ban shaped her approach

Navya’s school blocks ChatGPT, Claude and similar tools on its WiFi. She said the restriction meant she used AI much less during school hours.

“It made me use it in school way less,” she said. “So I guess, as annoying as it was, it was still good, in a way.”

Tuteja does not believe generative AI is inherently the problem, although she worries it could make people “dumber”. She said, “People just don’t know how to use it properly.”

She is president of her school’s AI club and says she now follows a similar discipline voluntarily. She wrote Raaha’s underlying algorithm herself and mainly used AI for mechanical tasks such as cleaning up the website’s design.

For schoolwork, she does not use AI. “I try to do all my learning myself, especially for stuff I have exams for,” she said.

AI use among students

Her approach comes as AI use for schoolwork rises. RAND polling found that the share of students regularly using AI for homework increased from 48% to 62% between May and December 2025. Two-thirds of those students said AI was hurting their critical thinking.

A Science study of more than 95,000 undergraduates found that daily AI users were nearly four times as likely as monthly users to say they had used AI to cheat, at 26% versus 7%.

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From AI startup to policy work

Tuteja has also built Legible, a tool that translates special-education documents such as IEPs and 504 plans into plain language. She developed it after finding that AI summaries of disability information from state databases often left out sourcing needed by parents.

She has proposed a transparency standard called Traceable Accessibility and has pitched it to local state senators and discussed it with the US Department of Education.

Although she supports regulation of AI, Tuteja does not believe banning it in schools is the answer.

“I don’t think banning it is the solution,” she said. “I think you have to regulate it in the right way.”

Tuteja plans to attend college, but said she would consider running Raaha full-time if it continues to grow at its current pace.